Robot Gendering: Influences on Trust, Occupational Competency, and Preference of Robot Over Human

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation into the differences found in participants' comfort levels with using new humanoid robots in addition to the tendency to give a gender to a robot designed to be gender neutral. These factors were used to examine participants' perception of occupational competency, trust, and preference for a humanoid robot over a human male or female for various occupations. Our results suggest that comfort level influences these metrics but does not cause a person to ascribe a gender to a gender-neutral robot. These findings suggest that there is no need to perpetuate societal gender norms onto robots. However, even when designing for robot gender neutrality people are still more likely to ascribe a gender to the robot, but this gendering does not significantly impact occupational judgements.